Superb ! You must fly a lot !

Many people have - seems the vast majority prefer the 15mm.

Superb ! If it is anywhere near as good as Samyang's 35/85 (and at a similar prince-point) then this is a winner and I'll sell my Sigma 10-20 and get this instead.

The 15 Ltd is one of my favourite Pentax lenses. It is a gem of a lens. Colours SOOC are gorgeous and it's very sharp. It is incredibly difficult to make this lens flare but you get superb starbursts from any point of strong light.

It takes superb landscape shots - but not your standard shots of hills, lakes, the sea and rivers etc. .. unless you have a strong foreground subject. For pure landscape shots of the ilk above I'd recommend a 28mm and stitch (the 28mm lens has been shown to have the least distortion for WA use). I use the Zeiss 28mm/2.8 but if you want AF then the 31 Ltd would make a superb alternative. Whatever you use you want edge to edge sharpness.

Note that for architectural use you would need to use something like PT Lens to straighten the lines - which would defeat the purpose since using PT Lens (or pretty much any program for 'straightening' WA distortion) means cropping of the photo and you would have been better off with the 28mm to start with !

Now you can try it out on your K5 too - would love to see a comparison !

link

Excellent shots there Gary, in a very challenging environment.

Sounds like an event I was hired to shoot.

18-55 and your Metz flash is all you will need. Buy a cheap copy of the Gary Fong Lightsphere diffuser or something similar to give you soft light form your flash (bouncing is all well and good but doesn't always work !) and shoot at f5.6 (f8 to be sure you have everyone in focus).

Practice practice practice at home (make the conditions as similar as you can).

That said - if it were me I doubt I'd be the one doing the shooting, it's YOUR wife's birthday and you should be beside, her not off shooting all over the shop ! She would, I'm sure, want you in many shots with her !

12 hr birding run. Driving from Shanghai down to Nan Hui then later across the 30 kms long bridge to Yangshan deep water port to bird the islands there.

Last week was amazing, the migration is in full flight !

Birds seen include : the gorgeous Fairy Pitta (less than 2,000 remain so a very very rare bird), multiple varieties of Flycatchers & Herons, Yellow Bittern, Prinia, at least 6 common kingfishers, Shrikes, Whimbrels, Grebes, Wagtails, Siberian Blue Robins, a female Japanese Paradise Flycatcher, Oriental Cuckoos ... whew ! Amazing birding !

Hopefully today will be the same !

There are some shots on my SmugMug (can't post then here because they were taken with the D800+Sigma 500)

Anything updated on the 2/3 Sept. : http://frogfish.smugmug.com/Category

Lovely shots as always ! That tree stump is doing sterling business

ROFL ! Hope you manage to get the little blighters out Ken